Ingush Jamaat

Vilayat Galgaycho (Province of Ingushetia, Russian: Вилайят Галгайче) is an Islamist militant organization connected to numerous attacks against the local and federal security forces in the Russian regions of Ingushetia and Chechnya in the North Caucasus. Since 2007 it has been a part of the Caucasus Emirate and takes part in the Insurgency in the North Caucasus. The group is thought to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, mostly policemen, military personnel and officials.

History

The origins of the Vilayat Galgaycho can be found during the Ossetian-Ingush conflict. The Ingush are closely related to the Chechens. Both peoples are part of the Nakh tribes, speak Nakh languages and share a common culture, language, religions, and fates. Many of the Ingush lived in the Chechen capital of Grozny during the outbreak of the war and fought along with the Chechen separatists. They never aimed at creating their own separate unit as they were scattered among various Chechen units under the commands of Ruslan Gelayev and Shamil Basayev. These Ingush played a large role in the 1996 siege of Grozny; it took Russian forces over 15 months to capture Bamut, a former Soviet ICBM base, because of the impenetrable construction of the ICBM base installations and some help from Ingush rebels. Many Ingush think that it was Ruslan Aushev, then the president of Ingushetia, who officially opposed Russia's military campaign, and made everything possible not to let Ingush people to be dragged into full scale war, that the conflict did not spread to Ingushetia and didn't cost additional Russian and Ossetian lives.

After the Second Chechen War broke out, many of the Ingush fighters did not participate in the war as it was viewed as a nationalist movement. Some of them still felt closely related to their destroyed home-city Grozny started rebuilding their military units in Ingushetia, still loyal to Aslan Maskhadov and Basayev. In 2000-2001 the jamaat was reformed along territorial lines in Ingushetia proper, with many units tied to a single city or area. Following the changes in the organisation, all Ingush units started working under the unified Jamaat Shariat (not to be confused with Dagestan's Shariat Jamaat). In 2004 the Jamaat was renamed to Shariat Special Operations Group in accordance with the wishes of Maskhadov; later this changed to Ingush sector of the South-Western Front and, when Abdul-Halim Sadulayev created the Caucasian Front in 2005, Sadulayev referred to it as the Ingush sector of the Caucasus Front. Throughout its many name changes it was mostly referred to simply as the Ingush Jamaat.^[3][4]

The group played a key role in the 2004 Nazran raid, an important event which helped to escalate the low-level Ingush insurgency since 2002 into the increasing unrest^[5] and eventually into a "civil war", in which more than 800 people died in this tiny republic of less than 500,000 by November 2008.^[6] It also took part in the 2005 Nalchik raid, organized by the local Kabardino-Balkar group Yarmuk Jamaat. Following the death of Ilyas Gorchkhanov in Nalchik, the leader of the Ingush Jamaat was Akhmed Yevloyev until his capture in June 2010.^[7] Later in 2010, the Vilayat adopted more nationalist rhetoric, vowing to "temporarily" stop killing Ingush policemen^[8] and instead attack targets in North Ossetia and help to reclaim the native Ingush lands of Prigorodny District. The group also reaffirmed its loyalty to Umarov following the rejection of his leadership by the Chechen rebels in 2010.^[9]

See also

• Civil war in Ingushetia

References

External links

• (Russian) Official website